Few of the attendant characteristics of civilisation were wanting in the Aztec empire. There were capital punishments, a standing army, continental wars, prisons thickly tenanted, and the sale of stimulating drinks to the thousands who loved to purchase such an elysium as such beverage could give. If we may judge, as doubtless we may truly judge, from the pages of Prescott and Brantz Mayer, the civilisation of Montezuma and his Mexicans was not of a quality that Cortez and his followers had much right to carp at. Allowing for some objectionable salient points, the necessary results of uncontrollable circumstances, the court, camp, and city of Mexico were as decent a court, as cleanly a camp, and quite as moral a city, as could have been found in Europe-in England, France, Spain, or Italy-at that time. If the Mexicans paid almost divine honours to their emperor, so at the same moment did our English peers rise when the words "sacred majesty' were pronounced, and bow to the throne or to the demi-god that sat thereon. Montezuma was certainly more gallant to the fair than our Henry, and his subjects would have been indignant had they been asked to pay such funereal honours to their lord as were paid by heathen priests in Christian habits to the body of the defunct and offensive Francis I. Spain accused the Aztec people of cruelty to the invaders; but the latter experienced more courtesy, and humanity too, at the hands of the invaded people than had been accorded, so recently too, by Spain herself to the Moors who had established themselves upon the Iberian soil. As for a contrast between Italy and Mexico, it was, always saving one or two exceptional cases, greatly in favour of our Transatlantic friends. Their priests were beyond the reach of the light that saves and purifies, but there was not to be found among them a chief like Leo X., who gloried in being more of a philosopher than of a priest, who laughed at his own ignorance of spiritual things, and whose elegance of manners and wealth of worldly wisdom were no excuse for lightness of morals and poverty of religious spirit. That this was the case in Rome is no secret. The English State Paper Office has just delivered for the public edification the account of the intrigues by which Wolsey did not reach the popedom. The most pungent trait therein is that of the Cardinals, who, after swearing to vote for our Ipswich friend, retired to a chapel, mutually absolved each other from the sin of perjury, and then went and voted for Wolsey's rival, Clement. Had this detestable drama been enacted by the Lake of Tezcuco, what sorry pagan scoundrels should we have deemed the actors. It is the boast of France that her cooks have six hundred and eighty-five ways of dressing eggs! The "chefs de bouche" of Montezuma had not reached to this culinary perfection, but nevertheless Vatel himself would have held in respect the Aztec guild of cuisiniers. "The cooks of the imperial kitchen had upwards of thirty different ways of dressing meat, and they had earthen vessels so contrived as to keep the viands constantly hot." I have spoken of the epicureanism of Montezuma and his people with regard to the flesh of young children. It is due to the emperor to state that at the remonstrance of Cortez he abandoned this little gastronomic propensity. The Spaniard told him that it was a sin, and Montezuma thought it, like many sins we have a mind to, quite as pleasant as it was improper. The assertion that to pick a bit of dairy-fed baby was an uncleanliness that Heaven abhorred, would have doubly puzzled him had he known that there was a whole nation of Christians given to the greedily devouring of the hideous frog, and that supereminently pious empresses of Germany were addicted now and then to dying of a surfeit of snails. Montezuma at meat was a sight to be seen, had the monarch only allowed it. But this matter was treated with sufficient detail in our last number. One singular feature of the feast may, however, be alluded to, namely, the presence of the "ancient lords," who stood by the throne, and to whom Montezuma, from time to time, spoke or addressed questions, and, as a mark of particular favour, gave to each of them a plate of that which he was eating. "I was told that these old lords, who were his near relations, were also counsellors and judges," and very pro ΓΕ per persons to administer the sauce of wisdom to the banqueting father of his people. It reminds one of the suppers at Carlton House, when Humboldt was wont to season the Regent's festivals with the essence of his experience. We remember, however, that when Humboldt graced those brilliant scenes he was at least not an ancient lord; and it is said that the joyous tales he told were quite as broad as they were long. I am afraid that on the question of social companionship Montezuma was at all events not less refined or difficult than the Regent. As for after-dinner entertainments, he listened to singers, gazed rapturously at dancing girls, inspected dwarfs, and laughed at professional wits, for all the world as though he had been a "Most Christian" or "Most Catholic" king in better taught and more religiously gifted Europe. When Cortez made over this splendid empire to his Spanish master, he conferred on the latter just five times more territory than that monarch had acquired by inheritance. The pope pronounced the human beings who resided therein as "really and truly men;" and Cortez was especially eulogised for contributing so many stray sheep to the crooks of the spiritual pastors speedily sent to divide them into flocks. It was said at the time that the church had never had truer or more disinterested son than this same Hernando Cortez. The ultimate destiny of himself and lineage seems to destroy the groundless theory of Cardinal Wiseman, that the generations perish of those who despoil the treasury of the church, while prosperity and uninterrupted succession render glorious the liberal faithful who pour into the coffers of the clergy that welcome gold which the descendants of "the fisherman" appear to estimate at something more than its value. There never existed on earth a man who so enriched a truly Catholic king, or who established so wealthily endowed a church, as Cortez did by the conquest of Mexico. His reward was persecution, despoliation, and captivity while living-the perishing of his race, and the ejection of his body from the grave after death. Cortez died at Castilleja de la Cuesta, near Seville, on the 2nd December. 1547. He had ordered in his will that if he died in Spain his body should lie within its soil for ten years, and be then removed to a final resting-place among the Franciscan nuns of La Concepcion, for whom he had founded a splendid house in Cuyoacan. Spain retained his bones for upwards of eighty years. They were then transported to the city of Mexico, where they lay in a chapel of the church of St. Francis for the long period of one hundred and sixty-five years. It was not till 1794 that his dust was once again moved, this time to the church of the Hospital of Jesus, which Cortez himself had built. They did not long so lie in peace. When the revolution broke out-a revolution in which the clergy took so prominent and so important a part-there was a vindictive feeling against all Spaniards, living or dead. The Aztec pagans respected the last home even of a dead enemy. The Catholic Mexicans, clergy led, had no such reverence even for the dust of a man to whom the nation may be said to have owed its existence, and the church her unparalleled wealth. The infuriate but orthodox mob rushed to tear the almost sacred relics from the grave; and they intended, after burning them at San Lazaro, to scatter the hated ashes to the winds. Private zeal, however, foiled the popular wrath. When the mob advanced to do their work, neither monument, tablet, nor remains of the conqueror were there on which to inflict their devil-fed and blind revenge. How they were removed, or whither they have been taken, no one knows; and this lack of knowledge is but sorry warrant for the unsupported assertion, or rather supposition, that "there is reason to believe that at length they" (mortality and monument) "repose in peaceful concealment in the vaults of the family in Italy." Why concealment? What vaults? What family, and where ? The Montileones of Sicily, the representatives of the family of Cortez, do not boast, I believe, of possessing the remains of the great conqueror; and, if they know not of his tomb, who shall say where the hero reposes? The last grave of Cortez as much defies the antiquarian zeal f that of Alaric Tun! very as does r of Attila It is said of a great Eastern potentate that whenever he heard of any event wicked of impulse and terrible of result he always exclaimed "Who is she?" The question had reference to the illustrious speaker's conviction that a woman was at the bottom of every incident by which perplexity was brought upon the world. Had his query been raised as the phases of Mexican story have developed themselves, it would have been met with prompt reply and a lady's name. All historians agree that, bold as were the followers of the great victor, the latter would have had another catastrophe to tell of but for the thousands of Indians who helped to gain the triumph, not because they were friends to the invaders, but because they were at feud with the invaded. This is true. Whenever the plague prevails in the East, the afflicted sons of Islam beseech Heaven to relieve their locality and send the scourge to the next town. So the first tribes who encountered Cortez no sooner felt his power than, by way of escaping from its consequences, they pointed out to him the wealthy and hated neighbour, to plunder and decimate whom they lent him ready and efficient aid. But woman had perhaps as much to do indirectly with the result, as the Indians had directly by means of their arms and guidance. Previous to the expedition having been entered upon, the fair Catalina Xuares had reason to discover that the consequences of listening to so gallant a wooer as Cortez were not such in her case as honest maiden would have incurred or welcomed. From the responsibility attached to such consequences the invincible soldier ran away, as frightened and as faithless as modern country bumpkin scared by the reproaches of a betrayed fair one, and the terrors of a magistrates' meeting. Hernando was brought to return and marry the too confiding Catalina by power of argument something akin to that which influenced Sganarelle in the "Marriage Forcé." I cannot help thinking that, good wife as he acquired by this union, there was long after it a cloud on his brow, which he thought to dispel by activity, and the acquisition of wealth in the pursuits of the tented field. The faithless lover wore with characteristic ease the bonds of CYNT. MAG. VOL. XL. matrimony, and when the Indians of Yucatan presented him with a score of female slaves, they probably knew the commodity which, next to gold, most pleased him. Out of these twenty he selected the crown, in the person of the dusky Mariana, who was quick of eye and of intellect, warm of heart, and ready to give all its warmth to cherish the conqueror before whom the men of her tribe fell as corn before the sickle. She appears to have been as clever as she was undoubtedly beautiful; as bold as she was loving; and willing to expend courage and affection in the cause and for the personal sake of the Spanish captain, who looked upon her as an instrument, and finally flung her away as a toy of which he was wearied. She shared his tent, and the apostle of the Cross went forward to win gold for himself, and souls for the church, with a heathen for his "light o' love." The connection must have sorely puzzled a people who looked upon such matters with abhorrence, and punished adultery with a rigour at which, no doubt, the Christian invaders blushed or laughed. The crime was not converted into a virtue by the baptism of the Indian paramour. Previously to this solemnity, Mariana had been as little popular with the orthodox followers of the general as the Popish Duchess of Portsmouth in Charles's days was with the "Reformed" people of England; but when she acknowledged the true faith, the same followers hailed the orthodox concubine with as much delight as the rigid English Protestants manifested at sight of that exemplary churchwoman Nell Gwynne. The converted lady now went forth doubly armed. She was soon capable of acting as interpreter between the contending or deliberating foes, and wherever slaughter or counsel was going forward she was ever found at the side of Cortez, aiding in the destruction of her own and her brethren's fair lands, and receiving as her reward what the poor girl thought was love, but what was, in truth, as little like it as possible. No one knew this better than Cortez himself, who had no sooner wearied of his young interpreter and secretary than, taking from her their son (whose descendants were rulers in the land of their mother, Mariana), he 4 B espoused her to the amiable and convenient Don Martin Xumarillo, who took the lady without misgivings, and with whom she lived without regard. The Mexican ladies generally, when their husbands were slaughtered, appear to have resigned themselves, with a submission that smacks of readiness, to the wills and the wooing of the victors. The mixed marriages that ensued were numerous, and Aztec maids and widows, to become wives of the conquerors, changed their peculiar opinions with as much inward conviction as visits a little German Catholic or Protestant princess when she marries a son of the Czar, and, acknowledging the religion of the latter, sees in him the only true head of her church. Spain recommended the union in question; but she never looked upon even the remotest issue therefrom but with something of the haughty condescension with which properly-born individuals are said to contemplate those who are curiously described as being only born after the fashion of nature. The example had its influences on various occasions. One of these was the Tarrahumaric war, in 1670, when the Indians would probably have foiled their Christian foes but for a native girl, who was induced to point out the place where the majority of the warriors might be surprised and seized. But the most interesting anecdote connected with the marriages of Spaniards with the natives is that which refers to the daughter of Montezuma and to her descendant, who is still alive to remember the fact and to glory in it. The eldest daughter of Montezuma was married to his successor on the throne. The bloodrelationship might have been a bar to the union, but the Aztec church and state could find warranty for such unions, just as Rome (albeit Christian) grants dispensations to liberal prin cesses to marry their uncles. When the Aztec throne and the emperor were alike destroyed, the superb but not disconsolate widow of the latter became a prize for whom the noblest of the conquerors gallantly contested and successively won. The last liege lord of this wife of many husbands was Juan Andrade. Their descendants were the Andrade Montezumas, Counts of Miravalle. The last Count of Mira valle had one fair daughter (Manuela Trebuesta y Casasola), married to General Miguel Barragan, some time President of the Mexican Republic. In the struggle with Spain, which ended in making a so-called republic of the old splendid vice-royalty, the last stronghold retained by the Spaniards was the castle of San Juan d'Ulloa. This, too, ultimately fell; and when the surrender was made, the Spanish commandant delivered the keys of the fortress to the lady of General Barragan, the lineal descendant of that Montezuma from whom Spain had wrested all, and to whose child, in the descent alluded to, Spain now yielded the last remnant of her old and highly-abused conquest. Truly, there is a Nemesis that is ever watchful, and a retributive Providence that "shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will!" The influence of the clergy has been as great in modern Mexico as that of the old priesthood was during the Aztec dispensation. The obstinacy of this latter priesthood caused the ultimate ruin of the country. The bigotry and ignorance of their successors have kept the nation in a darkness scarcely less gloomy than that of their predecessors. The Aztec priesthood are accused of cruelty because of the human sacrifices made by them to the gods. But in the fires of the Inquisition perished more victims than on the sacrificial stone of the Mexican wargod. It is to be remembered too that in the Aztec sacrifices the victim was ennobled by being dedicated to the deity, while the poor wretches devoted to a horrible death by the Dominicans were pronounced accursed here, and assured of everlasting damnation hereafter. If Christianity has held its ground in Mexico, it is because its salt of truth has kept it ever sweet in spite of the poisonous corruption of the superstitions under which it has been all but buried. It was well indeed that the altars of the old blasphemy should be overthrown, but when that of the Virgin of Guadaloupe was raised in their place, the poor Indians, who were told that our Lady herself had come down to one of their brethren to declare her will to that effect, and that she had convinced him of her reality by performing miracles for his especial private satisfaction, they might be pardoned if they turned for a moment to their own deity, "The Rational Owl," to inquire of his ineffable wisdom what it all meant. If we know but little of the ancient race, the cause and the guilt thereof rest with the Romish Church, whose faithful servant, Archbishop Zumaraga, committed to the flames every Mexican manuscript on which he could lay his hands. Ximenes did the same in Spain with the Moorish manuscripts, and our own Puritan Fathers are not free from the responsibility of having similarly treated the writings of their adversaries. They followed the example set them by the barbarian Caliph Omar, when he destroyed the Alexandrian library; and it is worthy of notice that the Rev. Dr. Cumming, in a recent work of his, entitled "The Finger of God," rather emphatically states that Omar did the world good service by an act which is generally held to have rendered him infamous. In Mexico even, the deed of Zumaraga was not so accounted of; but in 1776, the decree enjoining the clergy to study antiquities came too late: the means for doing so with facility had been taken from them by the local head of their own church. The local clergy have been among the firmest obstructors of the Government in Mexico at all times. They could always get rid of a viceroy by accusing him of heresy; and seldom indeed have the people been arrayed against the authorities without half-a-dozen "curates" being found leading and fighting on the popular side. In no part of the globe have the contests between the state and the priesthood been marked with such ferocity on both sides as in Mexico, and the details on this point in Brantz Mayer's volumes reveal a page of history well worth the study both of divine and statesman. Bad government in the state, and as bad, if not worse, in the church, have combined to deprive Mexico of taking advantage of the opportunity offered her to occupy a foremost rank in the community of nations. The clergy especially hoped to keep her stationary and stagnant by the decree which they obtained in 1824, whereby it was solemnly proclaimed that no religion but that of Rome would thenceforward be permitted to exist within the Mexican territory. The ink of the decree had scarcely become dry than Texas, the finest of the Mexican provinces, began to crumble away, and it finally separated from the Mexican dominion. They who can recognise Nemesis only when it is convenient, or flattering to their prejudices to do so, affected to see nothing in this consequence. But the Anglo-Saxon race that annexed Texas will not be satisfied with that possession only, they are preparing for further annexation; and they are, probably, destined to nullify the decree of 1824, by raising their permanent standard on the scene of the victories of Cortez, and proclaiming toleration as one characteristic of their occupation. Not till then will Mexico be happy, useful, and prosperous. Hitherto she has been highly favoured by nature and profoundly abused by man; but the hour is at hand when man will second nature, and inaugurate a new era in ancient Tenochtitlan. J. DORAN. NOTES ON MEDIEVAL ART IN FRANCE. NANCY-CHALONS-TROYES-PARIS-BEAUVAIS-AMIENS. IN my last I left my readers resting with me in the aisles of Strasburg cathedral, sheltered from the scorching heat of noon, and perusing the story of Our Lady's apparition at La Salette. There are some curious points in it, which are worthy of observation; but, as it would encumber my narrative if introduced here, and, moreover, as it would be better to compare it with others of a similar character said to have occurred in earlier days, I will defer it to a separate consideration. Before quitting Strasburg, however, and passing the boundary which separates Alsace from that which is French * Magazine for November. |